Woman bumped from flight, misses 10K dream cruise
So the airlines don't provide ETAs and don't include ontime arrivals as one of the metrics of their success?
It's a measure of success, basically goals they set, just like every other company out there does.
Let's use some numbers from united for 2016:
143 million passengers
~ 131,000 passengers bumped (129,825 voluntarily, 1,238 non voluntarily)
So you literally have less than a .001% chance of being asked to
give up your seat due to an overbooking, and less than .00001% chance of being forced off your flight. I would say that's a pretty damn good percentage to be at. Nobody in their right mind should expect them to be at 100%.
I used United because they bumped at a higher rate than any other airline.
How often United, other airlines bump travelers from flights
Now let's say they vacate 5 seats per plane to use as a just in case they need them.
4,496 daily flights (again using united)
5 seats per flight = 22,480 unsold seats per day
I'm sure it's way more, but just say average cost of those tickets are $100. Thats $2,248,000 per day that company is losing because someone like you is up in arms about 0.001% of fliers needing to be inconvienced. Would you accept losing that much money just because it may inconvenience 1 out of every 1,000 of your customers? No sane businessman in this world would.
http://newsroom.united.com/corporate-fact-sheet